


can't believe (what i did for love)

by tyomawrites



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, He was also really cool, I have.... 4 fics, Look I love Ned too much, M/M, Um i'm not allowed to write Ned Low anymore bc i keep killing him, Unhealthy Relationships, he deserved better, he's died in all of them, with him in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 19:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17813690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyomawrites/pseuds/tyomawrites
Summary: Self indulgent.step 1. get saved from a slaver's shipstep 2. fall in love with your captainstep 3. die for your captaina guide to loyalty by one Tallis Quint





	can't believe (what i did for love)

**Author's Note:**

> this is just self indulgent feelings for Ned Low  
> I can't seem to write something that keeps Ned alive.

 

It started out as a puppy crush Tallis Quint is relatively young when he meets Ned Low in early spring. Ned’s ship chased the slaver’s ship he was on, and any of the men who were left behind joined his crew immediately. 

Ned Low takes him on board, with a smirk and a hunger in his eyes, and then the next night Ned is putting him on his back and wrapping his mouth around his cock, calling him a good boy and asks him to swear his loyalty.

Ned is everything Tallis wishes he could be, ruthless, honest, quickly gaining fame even though it’s his first year on the seas. It's a dream come true for a boy who is barely twenty one and has been in chains half his life. Ned spots something in him that isn't extinguished, stokes the fire in his veins with affectionate hands in his hair and praises whispered into his ears. Ned uses his eagerness to please, to accomplish a lot of things, he sends Tallis to brothels and inns with a couple of men under the ruse of initiating a new crew member, he let's Tallis pout and make puppy eyes at the local whores in towns they visit, and he steals information for Ned—his Captain. 

By the time winter rolls around, his loyalty is cemented to Ned and their crew and Tallis is in love with the never-ending praises and touches that Ned gives him.

Tallis loves him —Ned— it’s the crew’s favourite past time, to laugh at him about the puppy eyes he gives their Captain. But it doesn’t seem to bother the Captain. Sometimes the crew questions his sanity. How could he love someone so ruthless so blindly, how could he give his loyalty based on the fact that he has feelings for someone who only keeps him as a convenience? They question and laugh and treat is as a joke, but none of them do anything to wipe the smile that Ned is the cause of, off his face.

Think with your brain, not your heart. Some of the men tell him. And he does, he really does. His brain tells him that his loyalty won’t go unrewarded, and then his brain tells him that his heart is going to get him into so many messes that will bring him to his end, but it'll all be worth it to hear Ned praise him again.

Ned brings them to Nassau of all places. The heat and humidity is nothing like the English waters that they used to prowl in, but Nassau and the West Indies are exotic and Nassau, Nassau feels free. It’s free from Colonial rule, it’s free from redcoats and, from what he’s heard, with Charles Vane sitting as it’s fortmaster, free from slavery. 

Ned gets slightly more affectionate with him while they’re there, when they’re on the  _ Fancy _ while Meeks has taken the cargo to shore to sell. Ned strokes his short hair and scratches at his scalp, and coos at him almost like he’s a frightened little bird. It’s a lot more gentle than his usual shoving into the bed and fingers curling in the strands of his hair. Ned kisses him on the deck, sits with him to watch the stars, murmurs nothing short of praise in his ears with one hand wrapped in his, and it's the closest thing Ned will give him to an  _"I love you."_

“I need you to do something for me Tallis.” Ned’s fingers are scratching at the back of his neck playfully as he leans over some of the maps on his desk. “I need you to keep an eye out for me while we’re in town, can you do that?” Tallis nods, when Ned’s fingers grip the back of his neck.

“There’s a good boy.” The praise lights him up, Ned pulls him in to kiss the corner of his mouth and then Ned dismisses him from the Captain’s cabin and he walks out with a dopey smile plastered onto his face.

His first encounter in the town is by Ned’s side. Ned approaches the lady everyone claims to be Eleanor Guthrie in the evening, and offers to buy her a drink. Ned flirts with her and then looks her deep in the eyes when she turns him down and explains exactly why people follow him as a Captain. Tallis does keep an eye out, he sees a lot of the men reach for cutlasses and swords and knives, but Ned isn’t outrightly threatening her, so he doesn’t move, and neither do they.

Ned pushes himself off the counter, gives him a look and leaves. Tallis follows, and then Ned is shoving him into an alley as a group of men walk past. His breath hitches, as Ned hides his face behind his own.

“Who do you see?” Ned whispers to him. Tallis turns his head and watches the remainder of the group stride past. 

“Four, maybe five men.” Ned is pressing him against the wall as he answers. Ned nods against him and shifts. Tallis’s chest tightens when Ned drags the length of his body against him and breathes against his cheek. 

“We can take them,  _ if _ they cause trouble.” The men are still lingering around the alleyway from what Tallis can see but he can’t concentrate on their faces while Ned breathes against his throat.

“Captain.” Tallis breathes softly. “They're not moving.” Ned’s breath is hot against his throat, and then Ned is brushing his lips across the hollow of his in such a deliberate movement that he stiffens against him.

“Quiet Tallis.” Ned’s teeth find his earlobe and Ned tugs experimentally. The whimper that escapes his mouth is pathetic. Ned’s hand covers his mouth, and then Ned is whispering in his ear. “You’ll be good and stay quiet won’t you.”

Tallis nods against Ned’s hand. Ned slides his hand down his face, thumb brushing over his bottom lip, and then drops to his knees in front of him. Ned manhandles his thigh so that his face is hidden, if anyone was to look down the alleyway at that moment. 

Ned starts mouthing at his clothed thighs, not actually mouthing at his crotch, all the while, one of his hands is fiddling with a knife. “Keep watching them.” Ned murmurs, orders, against his inner thigh. Tallis turns his head to look at them, biting back a whimper when Ned noses further up his inner thigh. 

The men outside the alleyway are still lingering, although they’re just standing and talking with each other from what he can see. One of them turns their head and Tallis can feel heat flushing into his cheeks when the man catches his eye for a moment. He shuts them, looks away and tangles a hand in his Captain’s hair, tugging urgently.

“Capt’n.” Tallis is insistent.

“Hush darling.” The knife that Ned was fiddling with is brought to his calf, hidden behind the leg of his trousers. “One tug if they’re heading this way, two if not.” He hesitates, and his eyes flick over to the men cautiously. A few have left the group, only three are lingering outside the alleyway. He tugs twice.

“Good. How many Tallis?”

“Three Captain.” Ned smirks and looks up at him with dark eyes.

“Let’s go.” Ned is pushing himself up onto his feet, hands curling into Tallis’s vest before tugging him into a kiss, one that forces his head back against the brick wall of the alleyway. Ned walks away after, Tallis’s lips still tingling and red from the kiss as he rests his head against the brick. 

“Fuck.” 

Ned pauses after taking a few steps, and looks back at him with a smirk.

“Come on Tallis.” And then he’s scrambling after his Captain and pretending that the flush on his cheeks isn’t spreading down where others can’t see. Ned kills the three men waiting for them outside the alleyway, a smug grin on his face as onlookers do and say nothing, and then he motions for Tallis to catch you.

Tallis just steps over the bloodied dirt and follows. 

Loyal.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Ned cuts off Meek’s head while Tallis holds Meek down at Ned’s instruction. His Captain gives him a small praise, scratches his blood soaked fingers into the hairs at the base of his neck. Eleanor Guthrie pushes to the front of the crowd and yells at him, at all of them, bans them from her island. Ned scoffs, and turns, uncaring, until a blade is held to his throat. The exchange is tense, Ned’s eyes are narrowed and Tallis wants to talk the man out of fighting his Captain because it’ll surely end badly, but the man goads Ned, and then Ned is slaughtering Guthrie’s bodyguard, and Talli’s throat and mouth is dry when he sees Eleanor Guthrie look back at the man that has to be Charles Vane. 

Ned is nothing short of smug, when he drawls out his words in a growl, an open threat towards the Guthrie woman, and Tallis’s heart is pounding in his chest. He and the crew fall into step behind Ned —like a well oiled machine in unison— as he stalks out of Guthrie’s place covered in the Scotsman’s blood.

The people of Nassau watch them in fear, some with relief, others looking so terrified as Ned’s smile is unhinged, and only Tallis can see the warmth that comes from Ned.

Back on the  _ Fancy _ , Ned summons him into the Captain’s cabin, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. Ned throws him onto the floor of the cabin and tangles his fingers in his hair, tugs onto the short strands until his scalp is sore. Ned kisses him with the same aggression he fights with, bites and pulls at his lip until it splits and he bleeds. Ned turns him over, strength in his body backed by his unhinged state of mind. Ned shoves him down by the small of his back, slicks his fingers and works him open while scratching behind his ears like he’s a cat.

Ned takes him like that, pressed down into the wooden boards, gasping and howling in frustration, anger, aggression and rage, until he pants hotly and is out of breath against Tallis. Ned’s chest drags against Tallis’s back and they both slump against the floor. Ned runs his hands over the nape of his neck, where the blood —Meek’s blood—has become tacky and has started to dry. Ned continues to pin him down, and leans in to lick the blood. 

It sends shivers down Tallis’s spine, and then both of Ned’s hands are sliding down his sides to clutch at his waist from behind. His captain pulls out of him and flips him over to presses an intoxicating kiss onto his lips. Tallis gasps into Ned’s mouth, and Ned swallows the sounds hungrily, his fingers scrambling at bare skin.

Tallis and Ned stay together until the first beginnings of the sunset start, and then the gentleness in Ned’s frame is gone. He still affectionately ruffles and plays with the short strands of Tallis’s fair hair, but his anger has come to settle under his skin once more.

When moments like those occur, Tallis leaves Ned to his peace, knows that Ned will seek him out again when he isn’t thrumming with range and the urge to commit violence. (Although, in the years he’s known Ned, those urges are barely kept under his skin at all times)

The sunset is beautiful. Tallis likes watching it, sometimes with Ned by his side if they’re docked somewhere and the crew can go to land and enjoy. Those nights, Ned is as calm as the sea, all his anger and rage and ruthlessness is buried beneath a calm surface, and Tallis can feel himself falling further for the man. This night, there is a cool breeze that lingers across the sea despite Nassau’s humidity. The night air is warm, but combined with the odd breeze, Tallis’s skin is covered with a thin, constant drying—constant forming sheen of sweat.

Ned is alone in his cabin, and Tallis has to push down the urge to go sit in his Captain’s lap with a bottom of rum, just so Ned can relax for another night. The sun sets slowly, and when the colours fade from a strong orange and red, to pinks and purples and blues of the night sky, Tallis can feel himself tire. 

The base of his spine aches slightly, and the prints of Ned’s hands across his sides are a welcome reminder of Ned’s affections. He’s just about to head down and retire to his hammock when a noise catches him off guard. Holmes is the first to look over the side of the ship.

“Rowboat, single man.” He calls back, and then Tallis and the crew are standing to attention. Charles Vane steps over the side of the ship and Tallis is filled with a sense of dread that makes his throat clog. Holmes speaks to Captain Vane for a moment, and then leads the Captain over towards the Captain’s cabin. He knows better than to pry into Ned’s business, so he joins the rest of the crew down in the quarterdeck, standing with Marcus and Ethan and a couple others that have gathered out of curiosity.

The only problem with that, is that they’re so engrossed in why Charles Vane is on their ship is that they miss the rest of his crew that sneaks on board. With a knife held to his throat, Tallis is terrified. Everyone knows about Charles Vane, knows that he’s the fortmaster and, once they’d docked in Nassau, knows he is essentially an ally to Eleanor Guthrie.

He wants to move, to will his legs and arms to work, to fight Vane’s crew and to check on Ned, but he can’t, and he’s no use to Ned when he’s dead. Holmes is on the deck with his throat slit. Ned calls out, it’s muffled, through the door, he yells Holmes’s name, and then silence follows for a small moment. Something crashes inside the Captain’s cabin, and the fight barely lasts five minutes before a scream wrenches his heart into his throat.

His throat closes up around his heart when Captain Vane comes out of the Captain’s cabin with Ned’s head in his hands. “No...no.” He struggles against the man holding him, even with the blade to his throat. He feels the blade nick his skin, sharp, and then the slow trickle of warmth down his throat, before his blood lingers in the hollow of his throat.

Vane hands off Ned’s head to one of his men, and there’s tears in his eyes when Vane stares right at him, looking intrigued. “Bring the boy with us.” Vane tilts his head, and then turns away from them. The rest of his —Ned’s old crew—Ned is dead— Ned’s — crew is silent when the man holding him wrestles him away from them. No one says a word as he curses and spits, not when they whack him across the face or punch his cheek. 

They have to haul him overboard. Tallis is fighting to get back to Ned’s body every step of the way as Vane’s men march him up towards to the fort. Vane’s crew doesn’t speak to him despite all his stubbornness and irritation, they look at him with something close to pity, almost, and it makes his stomach churn.

They leave him in a locked dungeon, not bothering with chaining him or telling him anything. They just shove him in and lock the door behind him. He slams on the door once, twice, a few more times until someone slams back and grunts at him to shut the fuck up. He backs away from the door then, slides down against the wall and hugs his knees to his chest in the damp, cold dark.

Ned’s eyes were so very much dead, when he’d looked at his Captain’s severed head. Dead —gone—motionless—dead. Ned is dead. Ned doesn’t even die the death he’d dreamed at night. He doesn’t get very much time alone to his thoughts.

The door to the cell in the dungeon, his cell, creaks open with a loud scratch against the floor, and then Captain Vane is stepping through the door.

“You must be Tallis.” Captain Vane’s voice is low, it’s a barely there growl, but his voice is smooth. Vane steps closer to him. When Tallis responds with a glare, Vane takes two quick strides across his cell to yank him to his feet by his hair.

“You’re so loyal to that psychopath of a Captain.” Vane hisses in his face. “But you’re cowering in here.”

“I wasn’t given a choice.” Tallis spits. His scalp aches, the pleasant ache from Ned’s fingers are replaced by the aggression from Vane’s and it makes his blood boil. He won’t let his last memories of Ned get, erased.

“Like you weren’t given a choice with Ned Low?” Vane releases the hold on his hair, but still stands in his personal space waiting for answer.Vane implies that Ned is like the slaver that held him on that ship, implies even if Vane doesn't know it.

“Ned always gave me a choice.” Tallis closes his eyes, unwilling to look. Vane’s hands are still covered in blood, and Tallis is sure that now his hair will have Ned’s blood in it too. It’s Vane that brings a knife to his throat when there’s nothing more to be said, Tallis has nothing more to say about Ned, just venom to spit that rolls and presses on the tip of his tongue. He opens his eyes, finally, and Vane looks at him with pity, like how his crew did.

“Ned Low made a mistake.” Vane says lowly, pressing the knife against his throat. Tallis grins, and from the way Vane reacts, he thinks maybe he’s finally looking as unhinged as Ned would be. The grin would make Ned proud. Ned taught him so much.

“He threatened Eleanor Guthrie, and you would protect her.” Tallis can put two and two together. A pirate captain just doesn’t kill another without good reason. “She won’t love you. She thinks she’s too good for kind like us.” He’s goading Vane now, leans forward to press his throat further against the blade. Ned would be proud that he isn't cowering right now.

Vane’s eyes are dark and narrowed, when he meets them. His fingers are squeezing onto Tallis's shoulder, and if Tallis pays attention, he can pick up the slight shake of anger in Vane’s fingers. “Women like her will think of us as loyal dogs and scum on the base of her shoes.” Vane is breathing through his mouth harshly as Tallis spits the words. His throat is bleeding again, the blade cutting into it shallowly. Ned would be whispering praises into his throat, if he was the one holding a knife to his throat right now. Ned would lick the blood that lingers in the hollow of his throat and praise him until his head is filled with want and lust and the kind of clarity that shows Tallis who Ned is.

“The only people worthy of loyalty are people that won’t toy with your love.” He thinks of Ned, despite all his anger and insanity, was honest and open and didn’t lie. He thinks about the awe in his heart when Ned pulls him from the slaver ship and fucks him and asks for his loyalty. He thinks about the bruising kisses Ned liked to give him. 

He thinks about Ned’s hands on his waist that night, and the feel of Ned’s mouth on the nape of his neck, and he presses forward further, until instead of words, the venom that Ned would be so proud of, he spits blood from his lips with a grin, a grin he’s taken straight from Ned’s playbook. Vane drops the knife, and him. 

Tallis falls against Vane first, His blood squirts onto Vane’s shirt and chest, onto Vane’s hands when they come to his throat. He drops from Vane's chest to his knees, he can barely feel them against the cold of the dungeon. Vane lays him down, his hands trying to stop the bleeding—why? Tallis doesn't know. Tallis’s eyes are wide open as he thinks about Ned, unhinged, angry, insane, as he thinks of Ned, honest, affectionate, different.

He thinks about the closest I love you he's gotten from Ned.

The lights in his eyes go out as he thinks of Ned’s hand scratching behind his ears,

The warm feel of a mouth at the nape of his neck is the last thing he thinks of.


End file.
